MIRRI
A loud crack shattered the illusion of sleep, mercilessly ripping her out of the nightmare and driving Mirri's hearts into a thundering drumbeat.
Panic was an insufficient tool to orient herself in the darkness, but she knew the room. Instead of sand, her talons hit the reed mats on the floor next to her bed.
There was no flash of blades in the darkness beside her, so the disruption would be outside. She didn't quite scrape scales off her knee into the wardrobe across the narrow space as she spun out from under the thick blankets, but it was a close thing. Her belt was hung on the same bedpost as always, a handle carved for her palms specifically releasing the bronze blade from its scabbard.
Her other hand was busy weaving mana already as she finished standing, but she restrained herself instead of flooding the array with power. Burnt scales, ruined night vision, or even scorch marks on the furniture would make things difficult, if it were a false alarm again.
She was supposed to be getting better.
Torchlight creeping into the room through the slats in her closed shutters accompanied the sounds of several someones' revelry, giving her a clue as to the source of the disruption.
Mirri crept towards the light, peering through, and saw several of the temple's Wards clustered in the dark next to loaded wagons, a mixed group of fluttering wings and a few shell-backed males as well.
One of them was crouched to scoop shattered pottery off a wet spot on the pavement, muttering an apology.
The dimming tension left her feeling empty as the staccato double rhythm of blood thundering in her ears left her.
It had not been a firearm, and no one was in danger. Least of all her, locked up in the acolyte dormitories for a good night's rest while everyone else gathered for spring festivities.
Tonight would only truly devolve into revelry after the comet fell, or when the first scouts reported back, if it fell nearby. Before then, a reasonable level of sobriety was expected, in case arms were needed.
Relieved to see no flat-faced human raiders wielding sulfur munitions and wolfsteel blades about to fall upon the temple, Mirri stopped feeding her knife mana. The deep orange glow she had managed by reflex faded away from the edges of the bronze blade. She fumbled for the scabbard in the shades of gray untouched by torchlight from outside.
"What a tale that would have been." She grumbled. "Isha's feral Firebrand, leaping naked from her window to battle imaginary knights."
Speaking her title still stung her tongue in ways unrelated to the physical, and left a bad taste in her mouth that had nothing to do with having just been asleep. The waterskin hung at her belt was half-empty, until she sank the teeth into the stopper to pry at it. Then it was a quarter-full, and her mouth felt a bit cleaner.
The chill of the room notified her that she had, in fact, spilled some of the water down her scales in the process. Mirri flexed her wings carefully in the narrow space to contour the muscles on her chest and make chasing the rivulets with her palms easier. Her clothing would get the rest, when she dressed.
Which should be soon, she noted as she put one knee back on the straw mattress to check the hearthstone set in the wall. By the dimming warmth of the smooth, rune-carved river stone, it was nearly midnight, unless she had rolled over and fed it while half-asleep.
Either way, she had seen the wagons in the yard. Only her mother's caravan would have brought so many.
The Warden had returned to Second Bend at last, and would be waiting for her.
The linen wrap she stuck her snout into smelled fresh enough. She wound it between her hips and below her tail easily enough before the thinner portions circled up to cover her abdomen. Better to do it carefully, under the assumption she would need to worry about chafing on the march. Time on the wagons was a privilege she did not intend to abuse. She was a priestess in full now, not just the Warden's daughter along for the ride.
Duty came before privilege, if you wanted to keep either.
She picked up a clean tunic for more padding, with an unadorned skirt down below her knees, cinching her belt and its pouches above her hips.
The process of crawling through her armor and re-folding her wings on the outside of her back was done in a moment, well-practiced, before Mirri set to tightening the laces to cover the gap above her shoulder blades without pressing atop her wing joints, fumbling a little with the rawhide in the dark.
Housed in layers of leather, the runed bronze plates promised enough warmth to keep the average Ward alive through a few days march in winter with minimal shelter.
Or augment Mirri's natural body heat with mana well enough to drive away the sluggishness she felt even indoors at this time of night. Nothing her mother could provide would truly change the nature of the Tyrant's Marks on Mirri's face. All the tools and tutors in the world could only assist her in adapting to the bloodline's manifestation.
In exchange for that particular shortcoming, she had one advantage the average dragonborn did not. Fire mana was her only option, but came to her as a birthright, the instinctive intent of an infant struggling against the chill all but guaranteeing she would have no other options by the time she knew better.
With just a press of her fingertips and a minor exertion of effort, the filtered mana from her channels efficiently filled the array within the metal to capacity, warming her scales just short of scalding, at next to no physical effort.
It also revealed a smear of green on the inside of her collar.
Mirri scrambled to the washing bowl at the end of her bed, reaching for a cloth that was already stained approximately the same green as most of her scales, and dabbed it in the clean water. It needed to be burned at some point, or her mother would eventually discover that she had been hiding her face.
Going to sleep with the cosmetic still on had been careless, would have been careless even if she had thought she would sleep well. Mirri tried not to grind her teeth as she used her reflection in the water to carefully clean the smears of green off the splotches of orange at the corners of her jaw. She even traced a claw between the scales, hoping it would be enough to avoid the lecture.
It was the kind of detail one needed to worry about, when attempting to hide something from an Immortal.
Her spear in the corner completed the ensemble. Not that Mirri expected to meet any monsters in the halls on her walk to the Matriarch's office. It was just better to have more of her uniform with her, since she was already skipping footwear for now.
There was no point in guessing, until she knew whether her mother would have it rain on their path to Eastwatch today or not.
A copper hexagon slipped her claws and pinged off the floor as she stopped in the hall to retrieve her key from a pouch. She called the coin charity the moment her eyes caught it skittering under a doorframe in the dark. Locking her door, she paced away.
The butt of her spear clacked softly on the stone floor as Mirri took the stroll through the upper arcade instead. She passed a low-burning brazier, stepping through starlight in a straight line instead of shuffling through the curving halls running around the edges of the temple.
There was a faster route to the Matriarch's office, but she wanted to see if someone in particular was on the sparring sands, now that the Warden's caravan was back.
Peering over the railing, disappointment briefly surged through her as she saw Dovin's gold shining next to a hulking mass of gray scales. The familiar mercenary was pacing his words to the visiting Immortal as if instructing a trainee, rather than speaking to an equal.
The disappointment was replaced by a twinge of grief as Mirri reflexively checked the stranger's horns, and found them differently arrayed than her uncle's, because of course they were—it couldn't be uncle. The outward curve resembled his a bit, but the likeness was imperfect.
As if sensing her gaze on his armored back, the Immortal turned to look up, directly at Mirri. Her cousin waved enthusiastically, bringing all the pieces falling into place. Mirri felt blood rushing to her face, likely setting the orange beside her jaw ablaze even in the dark.
Raising her own claws to return the wave took a fraction longer than it should have. She barely managed to avoid throwing herself over the railing to demand to know what Viran had done to himself. What her mother had let him do, why Dovin had stood aside and let such a foolish—
"Hi, Mirri! I'm back!" Viran rumbled from below.
He sounded practically chipper, as if completely unaware of the danger he was in now. He was stripped down above the waist for sparring, with just an open leather vest covering his chest. Mirri could see the definition of his muscles around the edges and where he let the laces hang loose, as if he had spent the last season burning every reserve of fat and mana he had to fuel the titanic growth she saw before her.
He likely had.
Mirri smoothed out the ripples of anger in her voice by humming a greeting back with a false smile, not trusting words to hide her emotions as she raised her hand further to exaggerate the wave before turning her snout on Dovin.
Amber eyes gave away nothing as he met her gaze without any guilt at all. Dovin simply flicked his vertical pupils sideways, towards Mirri's destination, and recalled Viran's attention to the water trough beside them, repeating the incredibly basic instructions on casting that Mirri had failed to note when she first came into earshot.
Her mother would have the reason for her, then. Better have a reason for putting Viran at such risk. There would be no hiding his ambitions now. They had come from the city, and he would have been seen. The wolves would be circling already.
Mirri took the dismissal for what it was. She redirected her attention to the mosaic on her right, instead of the sparring circles or the sound of splashing, and tried not to calculate how the enemy would attempt to cripple him.
She was coming up with too many different answers, depending on who tried first. At least he had fewer delicate parts for them to target, but that just drove up the amount of brutality that would be necessary.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
The peaks of the Tyrant’s Teeth to the north had been depicted with just the barest hint of white at the top, which was only possible when the snows retreated at the heights of summer. Mirri had spent the winter wondering whether the artist had included Mercy’s comet above them as an afterthought, or if the mosaic had been accurate at the time, because the world used to be warmer on the first day of spring.
"They'll be rubble someday. He'll win, and this will be a memory," Mirri vowed in a whisper. "I promised him already."
As if in answer, the skies shone bright. A blue-white streak crossed the atmosphere, bathing the temple in pale shadows for just a moment.
Spring had arrived, and so Mirri was late now.
Increasing her pace caused her talons to clack lightly against the floor beneath her, until she was faced with a closed door sized for Immortals, and there was no more darkened hallway to angrily storm down.
Trepidation built as she hesitated, forcing her claws to relax their grip on the ash haft of her too-small spear. She couldn't afford to simply charge in livid, she also needed a favor. The delay of something her mother would rather she not undertake at all had to be carefully navigated, lest she throw it away entirely.
A breeze flowed under the crack in the door, over her claws and around her ankles, and Mirri knew she was discovered. The butt-cap of her spear rapped against the bottom of the door, knocking before she could be summoned.
"Enter." The Warden's voice echoed.
Leria's tea set was stacked neatly in a corner, cold and untouched, and the Matriarch herself was nowhere to be found in her office. Her voice still floated into the skylit room through the double doors to the balcony, which were thrown wide with the shutters. She was speaking familiar words of greeting to a small congregation of townsfolk, who were doing quite a lot of muttering under the sermon this year.
Warden Isha, The Storm Sovereign, studied a clay messenger's tablet from her borrowed perch in Leria's chair instead.
The objects on the desk were pushed aside around a tome made of actual parchment, flipped open to a midpoint and covered in tables, but Mirri couldn't read the runes upside down in the darkened room.
The light in the sky flickered oddly over golden scales as Mirri approached, tilting her chin upwards just a tad to look at her mother's face. Her tail wrapped itself around an ankle while she waited, expecting a greeting. A nod. Anything.
Finally, she was worth more attention than the message.
"How was your winter?"
Her mother's voice was impossibly pleased, and echoed askance for a moment, rebounding against a sphere of air that briefly shimmered around them as mana flexed, and the Warden assured their privacy. Sound filtered in from beyond the balcony, but their conversation would be for the two of them alone.
"Fine. What happened to Viran?" Mirri asked, skipping through the pleasantries.
There was an easy answer, the one that had led to Mirri stumbling alone through the highland woods under late-autumn rains to find him, but they both knew what she was really asking about.
At the question, her mother aged a century in a moment. Mirri's anger crumbled under words that followed.
"It stopped a month ago." Isha said simply. "He did it on his own, I spent months begging and explaining, trying to keep the power replaced while he burned through it. Nothing worked, and he won't tell me what finally changed his mind. He just promised me he wouldn't do it again."
"Do you want me to ask?"
If Viran was intent on pushing his way to Titanhood, it would not be a matter of keeping secrets. She would betray his confidence to his face, if she had to. She had known he was upset, no, distraught, inconsolable, but this—
Titans only fell once, and he would be brought down quickly. It was a slow but certain death even for legends taking care with their forever.
Four months of sparring with Dovin and a single vow of vengeance did not make one a legend.
"I trust his promise, but he may trust you with a reason." Her mother said carefully. "You don't have to tell me what he says, but someone should know."
Mirri dipped her chin and let the matter rest, but her mother wasn't quite done.
"By the time we reached the city last week, Saah had already spent every favor he's gathered over the last few months on setting the match." Isha's voice was offensively level, as she spoke Mirri into the crowd in the next evening's dream. "Viran will be in the main ring, against someone particular, for his Proving."
A knot of rot twisted Mirri's guts painfully enough that her breath hitched. She burned it away, pressing her already folded wings deeper against her back to ward against the cold, and for no other reason.
"They're going to try to maim him." She whispered. "Like me."
Mirri dug a hasty grave in her thoughts, and laid her request of delay there, to be unspoken forever. She would be going back to the city this summer, and if the tribes overstepped, the arena could smell like char again. She would skip lunch, hold her breath, and return whatever they did to him tenfold.
"For different reasons." her mother dismissed, as if that were the point. "Dovin has had him sparring for hours a day, and Yarrun has done some fine work at the forge, but he will need your help learning the intricacies of casting."
Mirri blinked in confusion.
There were better candidates. She could think of a dozen of her old tutors who would be a better match for a water mage. Especially one with weak fundamentals.
Her mother saw the question on her face.
"Trust in a tutor would take time to build, and he needs the kind of improvement that can only come from that. You have other concerns, speaking of the city."
Hope and trepidation both nestled at the bottom of Mirri's throat, waiting.
"You got a letter?" She asked carefully.
The spring surge in shipping traffic would not have begun yet. For word to arrive in the dead of winter would have taken a courier.
"You got a letter."
It was an intentional reminder that her mother would prefer Mirri put this childhood dream to bed, and leave their survival to chance.
Still, she had not hidden the news, and was even kind enough to summarize the contents of the message without making Mirri ask. Or producing a parchment.
"Nothing so direct as pursuit, but there will be no more delays, if you still wish to make introductions." Isha continued. "You'll have to draft a reply at Eastwatch, and send it before we leave for the west, or silence will be taken as disinterest. Especially after today."
"I do. Want it," Mirri clarified, before her mother could offer her fear any more excuses. "What's today?"
Genuine warmth drifted over the desk for the first time since Mirri had walked into the room.
"An old friend of mine is visiting. It's been a century or two, but she needs a favor, and you're going to help her solve a problem for me." Isha baited Mirri's excitement for only a moment before making herself clear. "Venatrix Mahira will be taking you out on a patrol."
Mirri hadn't known her spine could straighten so much. Her tail practically unwound itself from her ankle, twitching with excitement on its own. She swished it, low and slow behind her to bleed off the nervous energy that suffused her.
"The Wyrm nest by Ashwood. Leria has been worried about what it will do after the thaw," Mirri babbled excitedly before she reined herself in. Gods, control. What would the Venatrix think, if she conducted herself like an awestruck child? "We're killing a monster."
Not only that, but patrolling with a Venatrix after the Welcoming Night. It was no guarantee, the comet could land anywhere, but—
"You're going to be sweeping for Arrivals, too." Isha casually confirmed what Mirri had only dared hope, because it was only the wrapping over a much greater gift. "Treat it like a test of apprenticeship: their team took casualties dragging a victory out of the Wastes, and she's looking for somewhere quieter to roost for a decade or two."
There was no wind in the office—couldn't be, with her mother ensuring their privacy—but Mirri felt like the whole sky itself had just lifted her wings. There were only so many places one of Sanctum's elite would be welcome, or needed, for so long.
"The Highlands." Mirri said, sure as fact and practically twitching with excitement again. "She'll buy time for Viran to grow into a proper Warden. Wait, Arrivals?"
She finally caught up with the first piece of information presented. If they were sweeping for Arrivals, that meant the comet was landing here, in Tenashki.
Her mother practically purred with pride as she hummed her assent, smiling. Mirri had kept up with the Immortal Games being played. An increasingly crucial skill, if she was to step onto the board in her own right some day.
"You missed the sky." Her mother sounded almost amused. "Come with me to the—"
A knock brought the briefest flicker of annoyance to her mother's face. Mirri felt a telltale breeze as their privacy shattered to allow the door to sweep open and shut.
Dovin paced across the room to lean in the balcony doorway as he spoke.
"Exciting portents, as promised." The mercenary grumbled. "You've told her, right?"
He sounded anything but excited.
"I was in the middle of it. Come, Mirri."
The Warden's head nearly brushed the beams supporting the ceiling as her robes swept towards the doors as well.
Mirri scampered to fall in beside her mother before stopping, awestruck in the doorway. Her eyes went wide at the sight of a second comet in the sky, and then a third, moving faster now, all headed slightly different directions. She belatedly followed as they walked out, and realized there were more than three. There were dozens of lights, crisscrossing the sky.
A spark from the gods passed over the temple to the north, in the direction of her patrol this morning. Mirri re-straightened her spine, gripping her spear and squaring her shoulders.
Whoever that light brought would likely be her duty later.
Unless something ate them before she arrived, but Tenashki was a lucky landing by any standard. With a Venatrix leading the hunt, it would take a tragedy to see this year's gifts from the sky lost.
For the briefest of moments, Mirri lost herself in the fantasy of victory. The Highlands secure, Viran safe, the tutelage of a Venatrix, and an alliance with a faraway princeling securing the valley's future, all on her shoulders.
All she needed to do was exactly what she had been trained for, and the future would be bright indeed.
"I'm ready." Mirri asserted, too hastily. "This is what it's all for, right? Helping people who wouldn't survive their second chance on Avarea?"
Pride and sorrow mixed in her mother's eyes in a way that itched at Mirri's brain, and opened a pit below her stomach.
There was something more.
"What? What's wrong?" Mirri asked.
"It's going to be humans." Her mother said quietly. "The seers confirmed it—the only thing they agreed upon before they went blind to the cataclysm."
"The ones that land here? They'll be mostly human?" Mirri's voice did not crack while asking the question, to her relief.
It was a close thing, and one she would not have managed had she known what the reply would be.
"All of them. Everywhere. They were alone as a sapient species on their world, billions strong." Dovin said. "Nothing was certain until it happened, though. It could have been just a few."
The weight of the world crushed Mirri's wings to her back. She stretched her neck upwards, keeping her eyes wide against tears. They almost spilled anyway, in the face of the flickering doom descending from the gods.
"Mirri. Mirri."
Dragging her gaze away from the sky felt like looking away from a spearpoint, but her mother's golden fingers were there to help, redirecting her. She didn't even have to look down much, to lock eyes.
"There is space in the caravan, if you want to stay at Eastwatch instea—"
"I meant it." Mirri hissed, angrier than she had intended. "This is what it's for, no matter who."
Then she frowned.
"How do you know already?" She asked. "About the Arrivals?"
The answer fell from the sky.
The crack of clay tiles had her startle away from her mother's oncoming embrace as a metallic figure slammed into the rooftop over the railing.
Mirri stumbled further into the shade of the doorway at the sight of a steel-armored figure unbending their knees, hand reaching for her knife until she saw the flickering silver warp and bend like flesh instead of armor. It was not a human, leaping from the sky.
It was something far more dangerous.
The Seraph’s metallic wings were feathered like a bird's, and folded behind it without a single jangle. She carefully released her weapon, locked her jaw, and did not look away from the smooth, humanoid visage perched atop its neck. At least her confusion would be understandable, given all the anatomy, but the wings matched at first glance.
A shrill set of tones briefly attacked her skull. Mirri’s fingers reached under her helmet of their own volition to press the pads of her fingers over the ear-holes behind her horns, but there was no blocking out the dense waves of mana splashing over her mind.
"Inside voice, please, Sariel," Her mother fearlessly admonished Sanctum's representative, ignoring the cracked tiles. "She's only in her second decade today, not late to it. You will damage her hearing before the patrol."
The living artifice gesticulated at the steadily brightening pandemonium in the sky, humming something short and soft, with too little mana in their 'voice' to creep meaning through Mirri's skull. Mirri carefully controlled her flinch and tried not to hide her face as 'Sariel' waved a hand at her afterwards.
The gesture seemed almost concerned. Or derisive.
"Not all Immortals are born pre-forged, unless you've forgotten. That's what training is for, you polished puffin." Dovin replied before the Warden, confirming that Mirri's readiness was being questioned.
As the Seraph's head snapped around, Mirri decided that Dovin was either not very attached to being alive, or felt very safe taunting Sariel.
That opinion was only reinforced when he turned away from the clearly affronted Seraph to address Mirri instead.
"Would you help your cousin with some basic casting exercises?" Dovin asked, sounding almost apologetic. "I told him to practice until the light faded, but someone failed to warn me the sky would be flickering until near dawn, and he needs to hitch the oxen."
Mirri nodded, and retreated from the office at a walking pace, leaving the cluster of Immortals to discuss the coming days in privacy.
Lights in the sky whispered callous doubts in her ears as she wondered whether they would even need to be taught to hate her, or if they would simply know she was a monster from the start.
A species that had been so firmly alone in their home world might not comprehend empathy for unfamiliar faces, no matter what she said to them.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is the modern, western-centric name for a mental disorder that commonly develops after experiencing significant traumatic events. It can manifest as disturbing thoughts, irrational mental or physical reactions to trauma-related cues, and an increase in the sensitivity of the body's fight-or-flight response.
